Been working on this for a few months now. Started off as a command line tool to streamline the process of starting up TF2 idling accounts which then evolved into a GUI tool because I wanted to learn how to write a GUI program in Python.

TF2Idle is an open source GUI for managing idle accounts in TF2. What it is is a fancier way of starting up TF2 accounts in sandboxes with arguments. It is nothing more complicated than using .bat files. For idling on multiple accounts at the same time it requires Sandboxie. What it is not is a tool that modifies or circumvents the game or Steam in any way.

It can handle many accounts, it can handle sandboxes (terminating, emptying and experimental support for automatically creating and deleting them on the fly) and it can log item drops in an easy to use interface.

You can find the source code here and a precompiled exe can be found on the downloads page.

Hopefully the program is self explanatory but I will be expanding the readme soon. I will be also adding more features in the coming weeks. If you use it please let me know of any bugs/criticisms/problems.

FAQ

Any plans for an Mac version?

Unlikely I'm afraid. Sandboxie doesn't work on OSX afaik and I am not familiar with the OS at all so I wouldn't know how to start the game and such. The program will work in OSX though as Python is platform compatible, but a lot of the code will need to be rewritten.

SteamStats emulated the game engine in order to trick Valve's item servers into thinking a TF2 client was connected in order to receive items. Valve punished those users because they bypassed TF2 and were using a third party tool to connect to their servers. This is a glorified bat file. It simply starts up TF2 with supplied arguments, it does not bypass or modify TF2 or Steam. You will still need to run an instance of TF2 for every account.

I understand being wary about an idling program and a program that you enter your Steam details into, which is why the program is open source so you can review the code yourself. The binary exe can be compiled by using PyInstaller and the supplied spec file in the Github repo, or you can just install Python yourself and run the script.

DF's idler acted as a TF2 client if and of itself; pretending to be TF2 when it was not. This simply controls the real, official TF2 client and does not modify the binaries, it only sends command arguments - and Valve has shown(but not stated) that they don't punish things unless you modify the binaries(which is what VAC and such catch).

A sandbox is an isolated environment. When you run a program in a sandbox it will have no access to the rest of your system, making it safer to run untrusted software. Some people actually browse the internet entirely in a sandbox as an extra layer of protection against malware. Sanboxie is a program that lets you run programs in a sandbox.

By running Steam in a sandbox (and thus TF2) Steam is isolated from the rest of your system. This means that while normally it would prevent you from running two copies of Steam at once, the sandboxed copies can't tell that others are running. This means you can log in to several Steam accounts at once.

It doesn't modify Steam or TF2 in any way, it just runs them. You would get exactly the same result if you were to run Steam on two separate PCs. This way just lets you do it on one.

Hmmmm be sure to check what else is running along side everything. I can run it all fine and still run a copy of tf2 myself without any trouble. Really though don't worry too much about how many you run at once, just do as many as you can without it being a problem

Sandboxie creates a layer between the filesystem and the program, so that any actions the program makes are not written to the real filesystem. One side effect of this is that you can run multiple instances of Steam and TF2. The amount of simultaneous accounts you can run is limited by how much RAM you have, as each instance of TF2 will use up a couple of hundred of MBs.

Do all the accounts make their own servers? I ask because I don't have enough ram to run all my idle accounts at once, I have to make a HLServer and have them join it, which cuts the ram usage about in half. If this tool supports connecting to one local server, it'd be perfect.

SteamStats emulated the game engine in order to trick Valve's item servers into thinking a TF2 client was connected in order to receive items. Valve punished those users because they bypassed TF2 and were using a third party tool to connect to their servers. This is a glorified bat file. It simply starts up TF2 with supplied arguments, it does not bypass or modify TF2 or Steam. You will still need to run an instance of TF2 for every account.

Oh man, that reminds me, I have a couple of 5 1/2 inch floppies laying around. I'm reluctant to toss them away, because it's a piece of technological history, but I have no idea what's on them because I don't think there's a functioning machine on the planet that can still read them!

This is completely understandable in every sense security wise. It may not mean much coming from me but I have been around from the beginning of this program and I am the one who asked him to make it so I can vouch for it safety.

I have never heard of text mode crashes. Heck, sometimes if I terminate the program it will just tell me that hl2.exe "crashed", even though it was a user-initiated action. Hasn't happened in text mode, in my experience.

The easy mode works fine for me and another machine I tested on but I cannot guarantee it will work properly on other operating systems apart from Windows 7 and different installations, hence the 'experimental' bit. It basically edits a config file for Sandboxie and creates sandboxes with the relevant information when easy mode is on and then undoes its changes when you close the program. Please let me know if you have any issues with it.

The option to delay account launches I will add soon.

Thanks, I will have a look through that thread and edit the default launch options if I find a better set. But be aware you can edit them yourself in the program settings anyway.

Thanks for the Explanation on the Easy mode. I will be trying that out soon. I myself have already edited the launch options and I think that is a really nice feature you have in this. I am already a huge fan of this app. It works very well and gets the job done! I can't wait to see how it evolves!

Some people can't be bothered to actually play the game, but still think they deserve all the hats and weapons that everyone else gets. So they make a bunch of accounts and stay idle in a server, abusing the random drop system.

You still have to pay at least $5 per account to be able to trade out. So if somebody has 14 accounts for idling (and 1 for playing) they have spent $70 on a free game and can generate lots of stuff for trading. Plus, it avoids the problem of pop-ups on your main account while you are playing. I get too distracted when I get a new item, and when they drop all at once it makes it much quicker.

So with idling multiple accounts, I would still need Sandboxie even if I did use this program. Doesn't seem worth the hassle of adding another program into the process to me, using Sandboxie is easy enough.

Came across a bug for when you try to idle on one of your accounts, if your account has a space at the end of your password it will not include it when trying to login resulting in a failed login attempt.

I'm sure you can all guess how i stumbled apon this, what a pain in the ass to fix for all those accounts -.-"

Thanks for letting me know, I wasn't aware of this issue. I have discovered the problem lies with Pythons ConfigParser which strips out leading and trailing whitespaces from values saved in the config. I am looking for a workaround that won't break compatibility.

Great program! Ive used it for awhile now. I am only having one problem though. When I click Update GCF's, it says "The GCF's could not be copied", then I click OK and another window says Remember to start the backup steam installation unsandboxed to finish the updating process". Is there anything I am doing wrong? I havent run into any problems so far though.

Hi. You need an API key so the program can fetch your backpack from the API provided by Valve so it can monitor it for new drops. This is optional, it doesn't affect your idling. It just means the program cannot log your drops if you don't provide a key.

That message is not a problem and occurs quite often. It will not affect your idling.

I might make a point later about going into some old emails from Robin saying that multiple accounts isn't frowned upon and in the TOS not having anything against it but right now I am tired. I know many people who idle and many more who run multiple accounts at the same time using programs (Think tf2wh for that one) and nothing has been done against them. Email Robin yourself if you are worried.

Valve hands a certain number of weapons to each account per week (up to seven, I believe). Everyone can get those and is entitled to them. Idling is just a way for people who don't play the game often enough to still get those items.

If you're talking about having multiple idle accounts, well those people actually have to buy stuff from the store for each account, and so they are actually doing more for the economy these days than people who bought the game with the Orange Box and haven't spent a cent on it since.

On the contrary, the TF2 economy would be much worse for the average person if idling were not possible. If there weren't so many drops, normal weapons wouldn't be worth a scrap and you might have to actually pay $10 for the Cow Mangler or whatever.